What are the USDA income limits?
The rule is one sentence: household income at or below 115% of the Area Median Income, adjusted for household size, for the county where the home sits, per USDA Rural Development and Handbook HB-1-3555 (2026). The dollar amount behind that sentence is different in nearly every county in the country.
That's why I won't print a number here, and why you should distrust any page that does. Median income in a county outside Austin and a county in rural Alabama are not the same number, so 115% of them isn't either. A household that's over the limit in one county can be comfortably under it one county over, and a published table of limits goes stale the moment USDA updates its data. The income limit is one of the program's two eligibility gates; the other is location, which I cover in the USDA property eligibility guide. Both gates exist for the same reason: Congress built this program to put moderate-income buyers into homes in rural and many suburban areas, and the 115% ceiling is how "moderate-income" gets defined locally instead of by one national figure that would be too high for some places and too low for others.
Whose income counts toward the USDA limit?
Everyone's, roughly speaking. The eligibility test counts the income of all adult household members who will live in the home, not just the people applying for the loan, per HB-1-3555.
This is the detail that surprises buyers most, so let me make it concrete. If your adult son lives with you and works, his income counts toward the household limit even though he's not on the loan. Same for a parent who lives with you, or a partner who isn't applying. USDA draws the line this way because the limit is about the household the program is helping, not about who signs the note. Now the flip side, because the two income tests run in different directions: counting toward the limit is not the same as counting toward qualifying. Repayment of the loan is evaluated on the applicants, their income and their debts, through USDA's underwriting process (the agency's Guaranteed Underwriting System or manual underwriting), per HB-1-3555. So a non-borrowing adult's paycheck can push the household toward the ceiling without helping you qualify for a single extra dollar of mortgage. The exact counting rules have real detail to them, which is why the USDA income eligibility tool asks its questions the way it does, and why I run this with clients instead of letting anyone eyeball it.
Does household size change the limit?
Yes, in two ways. The dollar limit itself scales with household size, so a larger household gets a higher ceiling in the same county. And HB-1-3555 allows certain adjustments to household income before it's compared to the limit, for things like minor children in the home and child care expenses.
I'm deliberately not listing the adjustment amounts here, because they're exactly the kind of figure that should come from USDA, not from a web page that might be a revision behind. What matters for planning is the direction they push: the adjustments only ever work in your favor. A family whose gross household income sits a little above the published limit can land under it once the allowed adjustments are applied. That cuts both ways as advice: don't assume you're eligible from a quick mental tally, and don't disqualify yourself from one either. The USDA income eligibility tool asks about household members and expenses precisely so it can apply these rules for you, and borderline results are worth a real conversation before you write the program off.
How do you check your county's USDA income limit?
Use the official USDA income eligibility tool at eligibility.sc.egov.usda.gov. It's free, it takes a few minutes, and it's the same source lenders rely on. Here's the walk-through:
- Open the tool and choose the Single Family Housing Guaranteed program. (USDA's site hosts lookups for several programs; the Guaranteed program is the one this guide covers and the one I originate.)
- Select the state and county where the home is, or will be.
- Enter your household details: how many people will live in the home, and the tool's questions about household members and income.
- Answer the questions about adjustments, such as child care expenses, so the tool can apply HB-1-3555's rules to your numbers.
- Read the result: the tool tells you whether the household's income is within the limit for that county and household size.
Two honest cautions about that result. First, it's an eligibility check, not a loan approval: passing the income test says nothing yet about credit, debts, or the property, which run through the full process I describe in the USDA loan requirements guide. Second, the income gate travels with the county of the home, not your current address, so if you're shopping across a county line, check both counties. And remember this is one of two gates: the address itself must also sit in a USDA-eligible area on the USDA property eligibility map. I run both checks with clients before anyone falls in love with a house.
What if your income is over the USDA limit?
Then the Section 502 Guaranteed program is off the table for that county and household, and the right move is to compare the alternatives rather than force a fit. Being over the limit says your household out-earns the program's target range there; it says nothing bad about your finances.
The two natural next looks are conventional and FHA, and neither carries USDA's household income cap. On the conventional side, first-time-buyer options start at 3% down, and I've written up how those programs work in the conventional first-time buyer guide (a few specific conventional programs carry their own income limits, which that guide covers honestly). On the FHA side, FHA loans have no income limit at all and allow higher debt loads in some cases. Neither is $0 down the way USDA is, so the comparison is a real trade-off, not a consolation prize, and which one wins depends on your savings, credit, and the house. Before you switch tracks, though, re-run the numbers properly: between household-size scaling and the HB-1-3555 adjustments, I've seen "over the limit" turn into "under the limit" once the math was done right.
Do USDA income limits change?
Yes. USDA updates the limits periodically as area median income data is updated, per USDA Rural Development, so the figure for your county is a living number, not a constant.
Practically, that means a check you ran last year, or a number you saw on someone's blog post, may no longer be the limit in effect. Median incomes have generally risen over time, which means limits tend to move up and households that missed the cutoff before sometimes clear it later, but I wouldn't bank on direction or timing. The discipline is simpler: verify against the USDA income eligibility tool when you actually apply, because the limit that matters is the one in effect when your eligibility is determined, not the one from the day you first researched. This page follows the same discipline, by the way: it links you to USDA's tool instead of printing figures, so it can't quietly go stale on the number that decides your eligibility.